EVE Online News

Ambitious capsuleers,

New & veteran players alike can grab the Starter, Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum packs at up to 50% discounts, from 7 to 11 October. Treat yourself to a variety of Omega Time, PLEX, Skill Points, Ship SKINs, and apparel.

With each Starter Pack available to purchase only once per account, and EVE’s UPRISING expansion coming next month, now is the perfect time to warp to the EVE Store and prepare for the future frontiers of New Eden!

Economical Capsuleers,

The New Eden Store now offers a wider range of Omega than ever before, allowing you to get Omega for less PLEX.

As well as the existing 1-month and 12-month Omega packs already available, pilots that swing by the New Eden Store will now find 3, 6 and 24-month options. To account for the new Omega amounts, the PLEX pricing of Omega has been adjusted.



The introduction of the new Omega options and the new pricing means a wider range of per-month savings are available. In short, the more you spend in PLEX, the more you save off the full monthly cost of Omega. The discounts are as follows:

1-month: Full price

3-month: 20% off the full monthly cost of Omega

6-month: 30% off the full monthly cost of Omega

12-month: 40% off the full monthly cost of Omega

24-month: 45% off the full monthly cost of Omega

Upgrading to Omega lets you unlock your full potential through new skills, faster training, and access to 350+ ships. So, make sure that next time you play EVE Online, you check out what the New Eden Store has to offer!

Performance-hungry Capsuleers,

During the keynote at this year’s Fanfest, we announced that AMD FreeSync™ support would be coming to EVE Online. In the October release we are delivering on this promise and enabling AMD FreeSync™ by default, giving you a smoother gaming experience (if you have a supported system), at no additional performance cost! This all comes as part of the EVE Evolved initiative, as we continue to invest in building better foundations to support EVE’s future.

[h3]A whole new frequency of fun[/h3]

While a computer has various components, there are two main parts that are mostly responsible for getting an image to your eyes: A graphics card (GPU) and monitor. These are typically connected through a HDMI (or alternative) cable.

For many years, your graphics card would send an image to the monitor 60 times a second. This is known as the ‘frequency,’ with 60Hz being extremely popular. In the last decade, there has been a huge increase in screens that offer higher refresh rates, with 120Hz or above becoming increasingly adopted in PC gaming.

It’s not hard to see why. Higher frequency screens can offer players a far smoother and more enjoyable gaming experience, provided, of course, that the game they’re playing can render the frames required. While you may have an 120Hz screen, for example, you won’t really feel the benefit if the games you’re playing only render at 60 frames per second.

This concept is not new and has existed for a long time, with not much changing since older CRT monitors were popular. It is a simple, tried, and tested solution that is reliable, but does have some downsides when used with modern technology.

[h3]A match made in screen space - balancing the framerate of the screen and New Eden[/h3]

The main problem with having a set frequency between the GPU and your monitor occurs when a game can’t render enough frames. For example, if you have a 120Hz screen but the game can only render 50 frames per second there are only 2 choices:

• If you have vertical synchronisation (V-sync) turned on, which is the default for EVE, then frames would get repeated, or dropped as required to match the screen refresh. This can give a ‘stutter’ effect, due to the mismatch between the screen frequency and the number of new frames from the game. It is most noticeable on anything that is moving quickly in-game.
• If you have V-sync turned off, the frame will render as soon as it can. This will usually result in the image having a ‘tear.’ This typically looks like an abrupt line in the image.

The ideal solution then is to move away from having a set monitor frequency (like 120Hz) and to vary it, matching the frame rate the game is rendering at. In a perfect situation, this means the monitor will only display a new frame when there is something new to display. Resulting in reduced juddering at lower framerates, along with eliminating the tearing that could happen with V-sync being disabled.



As you may expect, the technology behind this is quite complex. Compatible screens often have a limited frequency range in which they can vary the refresh rate, with 40 to 80Hz being common, although some modern screens boast much wider ranges. There have also been different tech standards for approaching this problem in the last few years, with AMD FreeSync™, Nvidia® G-Sync® and VESA DisplayPort Adaptive-Sync all being methods that tackle the problem in slightly different ways.

[h3]OK, I’m in. How do I enjoy this newer technology?[/h3]

Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) support is built into Windows 10 since May 2019. When running this Windows 10 version or above, you simply need to make sure you have a compatible GPU with the latest GPU drivers installed, along with a screen that supports variable refresh rate.

While we have worked with AMD to ensure AMD FreeSync™ functionality, any technology that supports VRR is usable; G-sync users will also benefit from this upgrade. If you wish to control functionality of this feature, then the control panels from AMD, Nvidia and Intel all offer options related to how variable refresh rate works.

The result? Capsuleers can now soar through space with the smoothest of framerates.

Fly Smoothly and see you in New Eden!

Enterprising Capsuleers,

PLEX is the heart of New Eden’s vast empyrean economy, providing utility, style, or simply wealth to any pilot – and there’s no better time to grab it than today, with a 15% flash sale on select PLEX packages from 1-3 October!

You can use PLEX to purchase Omega time (unlocking doubled training speed & access to training advanced skills), obtain services like Multi-Character Training (MCT) or Skill Extractors in the NES, purchase SKINs and character apparel, and can also sell any quantity for generous sums of ISK on the market.

Head over to the EVE Store and enjoy all the benefits of PLEX at a discount while you can!

Competitive Capsuleers!

A lot has happened since our last Alliance Tournament check-in, so let us get you up to date with what's already taken place, and what's coming up!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Trials and Main Tournament entry[/h2]

All the teams that didn't get direct entry into the Alliance Tournament this year submitted silent bids to buy into the tournament. This has given us a list of teams that will be battling it out in the arena over the next few weekends in the Trials Tournament!



The seven Minmatar tribes will be sponsoring the entry of one of the teams listed above, earning their way in through combat and a little bit of flag flying.

Each team is part of a group of six (and one group of five) where they will be playing at least twice and – if they win a sponsorship through the redemption arc of the Nefantar – up to 10 games!

As there are likely to be a few games in each group where two teams could win, a tiebreaker mechanism has been set up. In the case of a tie, if a team brings a Minmatar Hull, they are given bonus points for their team. Then, should a second tie-breaker be needed, the score achieved across their games will also be considered.

As dictated by tournament tradition, to decide the brackets for the Trials Tournament and the Alliance Tournament, CCP Convict and CCP Zelus did a short broadcast to share the information simultaneously with all the teams. But, rather than using a bingo ball machine like last year, the team's fate was decided by a marble run! You can catch the Twitch VOD if you want to see it yourself here.

The Trials will be broadcasted for us by EVE_NT on the CCP Twitch channel over the next two weekends. The first match each day will be starting at 15:00 UTC for the first 3 days and 16:40 UTC on the final day of the Trials on 9 October. The Trials will feature up to 65 matches of competitive combat and explosions for your enjoyment!

Given the unique format of the Trials Tournament, you can find a link to the schedule as a Google sheet here.

Image created and provided by Jeronyx

[h2]Alliance Tournament Match Weekends[/h2]

The winning entries from the silent bids and the direct entry teams give us the list of our 25 teams below:



The seeds and subsequent brackets for the Main Tournament were also decided in a marble run, the results of which can be found on Challonge here.

The teams which win through to the Main Tournament from the Trials will be added to those brackets once the Trials have concluded. The format for the Main Tournament is the traditional format we've all come to know and love, so on the weekends of 12-13 November and 19-20 November be ready to tune in for even more explosions!

[h2]What comes after the Trials?[/h2]

Once the Trials Tournament is over we'll have another update for you all, declaring the winners along with the updated brackets for the Main Tournament, the match schedule, as well as the Flagship Declarations (Team captains can register their Flagships here) from each of the teams.

Information about prizes for this year's Alliance Tournament will be coming at a later date.

We'll see you all for some explosive action this weekend and next starting at 15:00 UTC on CCP TV!